actually, to continue -> I found this on AnswerBag by an anonymous poster.

“I think the quote really comes from a play written in 1681, by John Dryden, called the Spanish Friar…In Act II, st. 1…”Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” ”

The anonymous poster who identified the quote as coming from The Spanish Friar is, I think, wrong. I read through Act II, scene 1, of The Spanish Friar, and the quote (or anything like it, including the words “insanity”, “madness”, and the phrase “doing the same”) is nowhere to be found in the collected works of John Dryden. The quote doesn’t sound like anything Dryden would have written. I have never seen an attribution of this wonderful quote complete with a real citation. I sure would like to.

I also conducted a thorough scrub of the Spanish Friar at both the Gutenberg Project and through Google books. All three versions of the play do not even come close to this quote. In the words of the MythBusters … this ones busted. On a good note…I am more acquainted with John Dryden’s work of whom I knew nothing about until I started this search.

Franklin gets credit for a lot of things he didn’t originate; I think it’s just his rep. Einstein had a real sense of humor, I can see him making such a statement. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a mid-to-late 20th century novelist, just because. Doesn’t have that chinese cadence to it.

The citation from Sudden Death is in the form of a quote attributed to “Jane Fulton”. The saying is found in print earlier in reference to its use by AA: “‘When I came into the program, I heard that insanity is doing the same thing
over and over and expecting different results,’ Valerie says” (Step 2: A promise of Hope, p10, James G. Jenson, 1980), and it’s most common references in the ’80s are in relation to AA and narcotics treatment programs. However, there is an even earlier attribution to Einstein: “Albert Einstein once said that the definition of insanity is doing
the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” (Transactions of the … North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference, Volume 71, p. 54, Wildlife Management Institute, 1975). So Rita Mae Brown is most definitely out as the originator of this saying. It may have been in use in AA long before 1980, and the attribution to Einstein may be incorrect. Citations proliferate from the 1980s on.

I am going to go out on a limb and attribute this definition of insanity to AA somewhere between 1935 and 1951. It was certainly used by Einstein in 1951 and NA in 1953(founded in 1953 by Jimmy Kinnon and others)

The Rita Mae Brown reference as attributed to Jane Fulton circa 1983 is much too new to be the original.

Einstein did write and reference the phrase in his “Letters to Solovine.” (1951) Being well read and interested in such human experiences, again leads me to believe that he got it from the AA publishing’s and others, Dr Silkworth etc, of that time-frame going back to 1935 and also perhaps in letters from Karl Jung to Bill Wilson.

The AA reference is from the description of the insanity of drinking again after terrible consequences, over and over. This is described in detail in Alcoholics Anonymous in the chapter “more about alcoholism” aka the Big Book, using a character who has a problem jay-walking and keeps getting hit by cars and buses but does not make the correlation of his actions and subsequent consequences. It is also an explanation of that first subliminal thought, as described in the passage about Jim, the used car salesman, the classic ‘slip’.

It is exactly the type of action that occurs in AA as described in the Comment by phoenix — December 27, 2008

“Not Einstein. Or Franklin, for that matter.

Both men would have probably understood that there are different forms of “insanity” and to reduce a massive psychological concept down to a single blurb is just idiotic.”

Those in AA trying to explain a complex thought and lesson to a shaky newcomer would in fact distill this concept down to a few words that could be understood and remembered and yes, repeated over and over again. This is a specific form of insanity that they are looking to be restored from.

Further support of this premise are the writings of the two founders of NA who left AA over the 3rd tradition who quote this definition in the second step of their basic text.

Because of the anonymity of the organization of AA and the tendency to repeat great turns of phrasing over and over so they loose their original author but not their impact, feel free to say you heard it from me! (much like how Ben Franklin got credit for saying so much)

[...] As Albert Einstein is said to have noted, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” In the case of energy, if we keep putting all of our eggs in the fossil fuel basket, all we can expect are more human and ecological tragedies. [...]